A Case of an IT-Enabled Organization Organizational al Change Intervention: Intervention: The Missing Pieces
ABSTRACT This case study documents an organizational change intervention concerning the implementation of a novel information technology at a university-owned research foundation (URF). It evidences the disparate expectations and reactions by key actors toward the change event, marking a mismatch between a new paradigm required by the new technology and existing information technology practices. Drawing upon change management and management information systems (MIS) literature, we discuss the perceived change management issues hindering hinder ing the change process at URF. Our discussion is tempered by a theoretical lens that attempts to integrate the literature bases drawn upon in this research. In particular, resistance from in-house IT specialists was observed as the strongest force obstructing the novel IT implementation. This study offers a forum to stimulate both researchers and practitioners to rethink the necessary elements required to enact change, especially with respect to novel IT implementations.
ORGANIZATIONAL ORGANIZATIONAL BACKGROUND The information technology (IT) enabled change process reported in this case is being implemented in a university-owned research organization (hereafter, the parent organization will be referred to as the university and the research organization will be referred to as URF ). ). URF was formally incorporated in 1967 as a not-for-profit corporation with its origin as a space science and technology research laboratory that was created in 1959. URF was established primarily to provide an organizational structure for the management and physical support of applied research, the discovery of new ideas, and the advancement of new technologies. Since its establishment 40 years ago, URF has expanded from supporting a single-disciplinary research base to a multidisciplinary research base in space science and technology, small molecular systems, water science and technology, and associated information technologies; from owning one research laboratory to over 15 research facilities and laboratories; from having two university professors who started the first research laboratory to employing more than 400 scientists, engineers and administrative staff. Over the years, URF has evolved into a distinct research institute with international recognition as an associated reputation as a world-class research facility. URF not only provides research administration, management, and stewardship of funds for university-wide research projects, but also undertakes much of its renowned research activities in space, water and bio-molecular science and technologies via its various research units.
URF currently has three research units and one technology commercialization office: the Space Unit (SU), the Molecular Unit (MU), the Water Unit (WU), and the Commercialization Office (CO). Each unit is characterized by its own identity in terms of management style, culture, finance, and research capacity. SU, as one of 10 university affiliated research centers (UARCs) in the nation, is the largest unit within URF and generates 94% of total URF research funding. The sources of funding by agency include: Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) 39.7%, Air Force 20.6%, Navy 18.6%, NASA 15.5%, Private 2.0%, other Department of Defense (DoD) 1.5%, other Federal 1.4%, National Science Foundation (NSF) 0.4%, and state funding 0.4%. A board of trustees provides oversight and direction for the policies, procedures and development of the organization. There are currently 16 members on the board with back-grounds in academia, industry and government. The president of the university (the parent organization) appoints URF's directors with approval from the existing board. Until about five years ago, URF was managed and administrated under the auspices of a university model in all operational aspects such as finance, human resources, and research/business development. The vice president of research for the university had played a key role in the management and administration of URF. A major portion of URF research funding was contract and grant-based and its financial structure followed A21 a university accounting scheme.
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However, during the past five years, URF has experienced tremendous growth that demanded transformation from a university-oriented organization to a business-oriented corporation. Moreover, the increased scrutiny by federal government audits required URF to move to a more independent business environment. As a result, the accounting scheme has recently moved from A21 to A122, a not-for-profit protocol, to reflect the standard adopted by many other major federal and industrial scientific laboratory operations. Also, the role of the vice president for research changed from active to inactive in terms of URF management responsibility. Instead, URF appointed a CEO to lead the organization. An orchestration of changes has thereby been enacted namely changes in leadership, financial structure, organizational structure, business process management, and IT. Due to the rapid expansion of the organization, the contracts and grants URF procures with federal and private entities demands an even higher level of research, ideas, and competence to compete with other major scientific and private laboratories. In fact, 94% to 96% of the research dollars generated by URF are contract dollars, unlike in the past where grant-based dollars were more significant. The difference between contracts and grants is important. Contract procurement must be competed with private industry and a good or service must be delivered. Grant procurement is only competitive on the frontend. That is, once a grant is procured there are no deliverables, and thus no competition exists on the back end. —
SETTING THE STAGE The slowdown of the global economy, shrinkage of federal funding available for basic and applied research programs, and increasingly more stringent regulations in federal defense research contracts during the past several years have greatly impacted the ability
of URF to compete. Such environmental change has seriously challenged the viability of the URF research and management practices that had been exercised successfully in the past. Taking on that challenge, URF top management launched a large-scale organizational transformation designed to revitalize URF and enable it to continue to grow. It was hoped that URF would be able to reposition itself as a cutting-edge player in the increasingly competitive environment by transforming into a true business-oriented corporation. One overriding strategic goal of the transformation was to ensure better management of intellectual properties (discoveries/technologies) to further secure and expand its business base and continuously increase its capability to compete with other scientific and industrial laboratories. To facilitate this goal, a novel IT (BATON technology) was introduced into the organization with the purpose of streamlining/automating core management processes related to intellectual property and discovery protection. An outside consulting team was secured to lead the IT implementation. Utilization of BATON literally enforces change in the manner in which managers use IT to create (and utilize) contract management processes, identify/secure new ideas and discoveries, and monitor contract/project progress. Consequently, effective utilization of BATON requires a significant change in current practices of the IT department. That is, the IT department must adapt to administer IT in the way that effectively supports newly created management processes. Four key groups were involved in the initial planning and implementation of BATON top management (essentially the CEO), external IT consultants, business managers, and in-house IT specialists. Each group (excluding the CEO) was assigned roles and responsibilities within each phase of the BATON implementation process. As the case unfolds, it will be made clear how each group reacted to the changes accompanying the novel IT implementation.
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CASE DESCRIPTION Managing change is frequently cited in the organizational development (OD) literature. Traditionally, three phased elements envisioning change, implementing change, and managing reactions to change have been reported in the OD literature as enabling change (Jick, 1993). We use these phased elements as a theoretical lens to frame the IT intervention described in this case. As such, we explore the change management issues occurring in each of the three phases based on the perceptions of change actors. To provide a theoretical foundation that will help readers better understand our case (within an integrated context of OD and MIS), we first introduce the theoretical phases we followed. —
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Vision Issues: The foundation of any successful change process rests on a clear vision of how change can be desirable to the future of the organization and how it can be directed and shaped to reach anticipated outcomes (Tichy & Devanna, 1986). However, as suggested by many researchers, not enough effort has been
afforded to properly communicating said vision and educating people to share in this vision given that it is intended to stimulate and guide organizational change (Jick, 1993). Without a systematic structure to communicate and translate vision into reality (Graves & Rosenblum, 1987), visionaries will likely encounter skepticism and other negative reactions to change. Moreover, the seeming inconsistency between vision articulation and action by visionaries in leading the change effort merely increases confusion and cynicism among organization members (Richards & Engle, 1986 ). Implementing Change: Issues involved in implementing change often encompass three elements supporting structure, change consistency, and the power to bridge the gap between the change strategist's vision and organization reality (Oden, 1999). To enable change, there must be a supporting structure in place that facilitates the creation of an environment in support of useful and innovative action leading toward realizing the vision (Richards & Engle, 1986). At the same time, consistency in change techniques employed during the process, as perception becomes reality, is crucial to enhance the enthusiasm and morale of the change actors. That is, if what is perceived as strength from one constituency is greeted with more ambiguity from another, the overall perceptions of the change intervention will be negatively influenced (Jick, 1993). Finally, change implementers often bemoan their frustration due to insufficient power to overcome the resistance they encounter to transform the organization into a new paradigm as called for by the change vision (Beckhard & Harries, 1987). Without considering such issues during the implementation process, there exists the potential to derail the course of change (as demonstrated by the consultants' experience described later). Managing Reactions: Managing reactions to change is probably the most challenging and unpredictable element in a change process. Receptivity, resistance, commitment, cynicism, stress, and related personal reactions must be considered within the framework of planning and implementing an organizational change, as researchers come to realize that organizations, as open systems, depend on human direction to succeed (Armenakis & Bedeian, 1999). Cases about unsuccessful change programs reported in many studies have exemplified that change without considering the psychological effect on others in the organization, particularly those who have not been part of the decision to make the change, is a major concern (Jick, 1993). OD researchers further point out that if the reactions to change are not anticipated and managed, the change process will be painful and perhaps unsuccessful (Beer et al., 1990). —
In the MIS literature, managing reactions to change is also cited as a challenging and unpredictable element. Traditionally, IT managers often take a technological imperative perspective (Markus & Benjamin, 1996). As such, "technology is seen as a primary and relatively autonomous driver of organizational change, so that the adoption of new technology creates predictable changes in organizations' structure, work routines, information flows, and performance" (Orlikowski, 1996, p. 64). Change strategists trapped within this perspective largely neglect the social issues involved in technologybased organizational change. The techno-centric lens offered by this perspective often
limits their focus on technological issues and away from human issues such as affective impact of technology on change recipients, behavioral reactions to change, and attitudinal shifts that may occur during a change process (Berney, 2003). However, as the studies on IT-enabled change continue to reveal the importance of the human element in this process, MIS researchers have come to realize that the technological imperative model is not sufficient to effectuate change (Orlikowski, 1996). The most current paradigm of ITbased organizational change intervention, in which organizations employ technology as a mechanism to enact and institutionalize intended change, requires change strategists to heed human issues and respond effectively to the various reactions triggered by the intervention (Jick, 1990). Furthermore, IT specialists are frequently referred to as change agents because they identify psychologically with the technology they create or support (Markus & Benjamin, 1996). Ironically, IT specialists that are stereotyped as being in love with technical change and seem to benefit the most from an IT-enabled change resist such desirable change implementation (Orlikowski, 1994). This paradox has inspired a new stream of research that attempts to monitor/analyze behavioral reactions of IT specialists and explores forces/barriers precipitating resistance to change. Among this research are Markus and Benjamin's (1996) study classifying organizational beliefs and behaviors of stereotyped groups of IT specialists. Their interpretation suggests that many IT specialists fear that new technologies in the hands of users may threaten their professional credibility and self-esteem. As they explain, "new technology makes these IT specialists vulnerable: unless they know everything about it, they will look technically incompetent when users inevitably experience problems. Further, even when a new technology's problems are known and tractable, the shakedown period increases their workload and working hours" (Markus & Benjamin, 1996, p. 391). Framed within the foregoing theories, the reminder of this case description articulates the research methodology and our story. The story includes the CEO's vision that initiated the IT-enabled change intervention, the external IT consultants' implementation issues, and the resistance from in-house IT specialists toward change. We organize our story chronologically to explain what happened during the intervention process and discuss the change management issues critical to the IT-enabled change intervention.
Research Methodology This case study explores an organizational phenomenon namely a change intervention enabled by IT and the reactions by various constituencies towards the changes during the intervention process. As such, we adopt an in-depth qualitative case study approach to explore the context within which the phenomenon occurred. The procedures for the data collection and analysis process are interwoven within an iterative cycle consisting of interview-analyze-refine-interview. —
Data Collection: The data were collected mainly through unstructured and semistructured interviews. Interview participants spanned across different levels and different functionalities of the organization, including the CEO, deputy directors,
external IT consultants, business managers, in-house IT specialists, and research engineers. A contact summary sheet was designed and used for every interview session to keep track of respondent information. Each interview lasted approximately 60 to 90 minutes and was recorded and carefully transcribed. Necessary clarifications with interview participants were made to ensure the reliability and validity of the data collected. Also, we supplemented interview data with on-site observations as well as various written documents (i.e., annual reports, mission statements, and meeting notes). Our data collection goal was to capture actors' perceptions of the intervention and the associated consequences of their actions as the change unfolds. This process of data collection proved to be efficient as it emphasized problems and issues that emerged during different phases of the change process. Data Analysis: To ensure rigorous data analysis, the case study approach as advocated by Creswell (1998) and Yin (1994) was utilized. Data analysis was integrated with data collection throughout the entire research process. Analysis centered on classifying data into coherent constructs (by identifying both surface and latent change issues), relating findings to existing OD and MIS literature, and generating/refining interview questions based upon the data obtained through prior interviews. Such an iterative cycle of data collection and analysis allowed us to organize new insights, accommodate emergent constructs, refine interview questions, and adjust the research focus accordingly.
We began data collection and analysis for this case study in the summer of 2003. The process during which we iteratively interviewed, transcribed, resolved data discrepancies, and synthesized such information had a duration of over seven months. Such a longitudinal approach is critical to investigating change intervention as it helps researchers capture multiple perceptions/perspectives of change as it unfolds and enables them to develop a cogent lens for better understanding organizations and people (Garvin, 1998).
CEO's Vision Five years ago, the former executive director of URF retired and a new CEO (the current CEO) was appointed to lead the organization into the future. His mission was to develop and implement a strategy of growth to better compete in a changing business environment. The current CEO can be characterized as an entrepreneurial-type of leader because his history is one of founding and launching new organizations. His leadership by vision style is new to many people at URF. An excerpt from the CEO's vision states: "URF has reached a fundamental turning point in the way it does business and performs research, paving the way for future cooperative success." It later continues with, "URF will further its efforts to a successful future via the management and commercialization of intellectual properties." To facilitate this fundamentally new way (process) of doing business, the CEO announced at the project introduction meeting with his business managers that "a new information technology has been evaluated and chosen to assist managing the transfer of intellectual properties into
the commercial arena. This technology, known as BATON technology, will be implemented to the benefit of URF, the University, and the community." Consistent with his vision and our interviews, the CEO believes that the successful implementation of the BATON technology will not only streamline, automate, and document the intellectual properties management process, but more importantly, it will change the culture of people by promoting a new way to manage the process of discovery. In an interview, the CEO explained: In the grant area, it's very much the case that your white paper constitutes your discovery. While you're delivering goods ([which is the case within URF]), not a white paper, you're not revealing your discoveries. [As such] we have developed a very poor habit across the University and in URF, simply to ignore discovery. Now for every contract we have, we are to identify the intellectual property [the discoveries] in order to report those discoveries and inform the federal government what they have earned through their investment, not only in the goods or services received, but also in the discoveries identified. By doing so, it is to change the culture of our people, to realize that they are having discoveries that have value internally, and identifying our critical areas of contribution is important. The discovery is our future. I contend that in the future, if we don't do an effective job of that, we will lose the ability to compete with the big guys who can just redo our ideas and cut us out of opportunity.
However, such vision had not been widely advertised and championed to other members of the organization because the CEO believes that change takes time and therefore should be communicated in a subtle manner. As a result, the vision was not universally shared among organization members, as evidenced in interviews with business managers at URF. "I know [that] many other managers do not see that vision," said a deputy director of a unit at URF, "I know where he [the CEO] wants us to go, but without a roadmap of how to get there is a question [shared] by many people." It is also important to note that the vision's promise to value people's ideas and discoveries and bring new opportunities to the organization did not seem to stimulate them (with the exception of the external consultants). Rather, it was seen as another wave of new leadership manifesting as, "I guess this is a different management style," "we just do what we are supposed to do," "as long as we get things done, it is all right, I think." Such are the perceptions of senior engineers that we interviewed. Even the consultants who worked closely with the CEO on the intervention project and understood the vision well enough to implement it had frustration. "I thought this was a pet-project of his, but it didn't really turn out to be the case because I didn't see [the CEO] put it as his top priority." Without consistent support from top management, the consultants felt powerless and concerned: "in spite of the fact that we are leading this project, there is no structure, and we have no power to push what we know needs to change."
Intervention Begins with BATON Technology The existing IT system, as explained by the CEO, did not include standard procedures to assist principle investigators (PIs) in documenting and reporting research activities, new ideas, and by-product discoveries. In fact, each PI used their own spreadsheet and other non-centrally-controlled software to manage research projects and/or contracts. Even data pertaining to a single project/contract were scattered across the enterprise without a central repository to consolidate financial, human resource, and project progress for said project/contract. The management and reporting of such scattered information for all projects/contracts at the organizational level was recalcitrant. The same was true with intellectual protection of discoveries. Moreover, the legacy system was not built to accommodate ever-changing regulations imposed by government agencies for regulating research and development of sensitive defense technologies. Without a mandated contract management process and a centralized system that supports said process, absolute compliance with regulations and procedures for each contract was difficult and challenging to say the least, especially as URF strives to grow and compete with other major industry laboratories. Building a centralized process and the associated IT system that optimally rectifies such problems, however, is not an easy endeavor. Given the weaknesses of the traditional IT paradigm in dealing with rapid system development and expansion (i.e., tremendous time and resources required), BATON was considered because it was designed to support dynamic modeling and deployment of management processes in accordance with IT. One of its important merits is that it allows non-technical people such as business managers to map and manage business process logic, and build their own management processes for each contract or research project directly into the IT architecture. Such mapped processes are automatically translated into the system with database interactions and programming tasks that are completed by system designers (see Appendix A for an example). BATONfacilitated designs thereby drastically shorten system development cycle times and reduce interference from IT specialists in the process mapping arena. That is, it limits the time (and workload) required of managers and system designers as they attempt to understand each other's domain knowledge. It allows them to more easily transform such knowledge into effective IT support for each individual contract. With BATON, management processes pertaining to project/contract operations can be centrally streamlined and thereby effectively reflect specific contract regulations because the responsible manager, who understands said regulations and processes, actually maps such processes into the system through a graphical user interface (GUI). Once a process is established, all those involved in a particular contract or research project have no choice but to follow the basic structure of the mapped process. For example, a business manager can create a set of memos of a process as he/she sees it, and these memos, in turn, are negotiated until a consensus is reached by all responsible parties. The memos are then recorded into BATON with help from IT specialists. Each memo contains process steps that describe workflow. Each step is associated with a
process-key and each process-key has a unique operational definition (see Appendix B for an example). All process keys are stored in BATON as libraries of process logic trees that allow valid users to navigate said trees. Process keys are really just sophisticated indexes that point to different locations in an overall process that is stored in the BATON system. The logic of a process is defined with a hierarchical tree structure. This tree (as conceptually realized by a manager) is finally translated by system designers into BATON. An integrated system is thus created because the tree represents a process that, once recorded into the system, must be followed by all users of the system. In mid 2002, the CEO decided to hire two IT consultants to facilitate the realization of his vision. He charged the consultants with leading implementation of the BATON technology at URF. BATON was chosen because of its innovative nature and process capability. Such features convinced the CEO that BATON was a good choice because it offered potential to alleviate many of the difficulties inherent in existing process management at URF, and in particular, the intellectual protection process. Charged with the responsibility of BATON, the consultants began the implementation process as well as other required changes. Their initial plan was to present the project to business managers to get them excited about how BATON can help their business. The hope was that the managers would become enthused so that they would rally further support within the organization. The managers quickly came on board because BATON obviously offered them a way to better manage their processes and obtain data when and where needed. The next target group was the in-house IT specialist, because the consultants needed access to systems and data controlled by these people. In addition, the IT specialists would have to be the long-term custodians of BATON after the consultants leave. With assistance from the in-house IT specialists, the consultants expected to complete the implementation within months.
Consultants' Expectations During August and September of 2002, the consultants carried out their plan with business managers as expected. They frequently met with business managers to familiarize them with the technology and convince them of the advantages offered by BATON, such as the ability to quickly and easily build their own processes. For this constituency, the consultants knew that managers do not want to be presented technical complexities, only how an IT can help them. They therefore attempted to sell managers on the ease of use and usefulness of BATON. To get managers to buy-into the BATON system and assure successful implementation of said system, the consultants carefully prepared their presentation and material in such a way as to demonstrate the business impact and how BATON works. Following are some of the most salient presentation points: BATON is a tree-based system development tool, and it is the most feasibly efficient solution for URF in its current situation.
Using trees, it enables managers and research scientists to conceptually design logical structures that automatically generate the necessary Java code, coordinate with relational databases, and work with directory services with the goal of building a complete application. No IT background is needed for managers and research scientists. With only limited assistance from IT specialists, managers and research scientists will be able to layout basic structure of an application within a few days, and by a week, they can incorporate a complete set of complex logical elements. Such elements will then constitute the architecture of a new application in BATON, within weeks; a resulting application can be built and tested.
During the presentation, there was some skepticism, but once BATON was demonstrated the business managers were generally encouraged by the notion of what the technology can do and how it can do it. The consultants also had a few managers actually design a simple process structure after the presentation. This exercise helped to greatly reduce any remaining skepticism. Within a few days of preliminary training, managers were prepared to readily accept the technology and facilitate their part in implementing it. The consultants felt very positive at this point in time and believed they had an important first victory toward disseminating a positive attitude toward the intervention. As a result, the consultants anticipated a smooth transition to the next step of the process gaining cooperation with the in-house IT specialists to set up a pilot infrastructure for the new system. This anticipation seemed reasonable because, after all, the in-house IT specialist would be managing the new technology and should readily appreciate its advantages. —
Current Infrastructure and Practices in the IT Department By October, after examining the existing IT infrastructure, the consultants noted that the legacy system built and maintained by the IT department for the past 15 years had many inherent problems such as lack of integration, redundant processes, redundant code, redundant data, and no apparent coordination. In retrospect, one of the consultants noted: Data is not stored in one place, that is, there is no centralized repository. This means that it is difficult to retrieve information on a project or contract on an ad hoc basis (via SQL). Data on a project or contract may be stored in several locations owned by more than one IT person (the DBA may have user information, the network person the same and so on). Data is not stored logically and/or consistently. There was no database structure or strategy (e.g., overall ERD) that could be found. We were never shown an ERD for human resources, IT or any other part of the business. As for system security which is a big thing for IT, the IT department does a lot of firefighting, that is, they fix a problem without thought of an overall schema to help identify the root cause rather than a symptom. For example, if security needs to be heightened, IT builds a new firewall (or firewalls) to deny malicious access. The problem
again is that there is no overall security strategy, just band-aids. At least we never noticed anything that explicitly verbalized or documented. Servers are everywhere with no seeming strategy for coordinating IT resources.
"There is a method to the madness, I suppose," said one of the consultants in an interview with us, "but it was not possible for us to determine their IT security, network, database or other management strategy because they are either not documented as such or they do not exist at all." Moreover, the culture of the IT department was such that "you do what you have to do to make it work." There was no standard in terms of system development and data access. Each IT specialist developed and controlled a piece of a stand-alone application as his or her own property. Decisions about which additional applications needed to be built and how they should be built were usually made separately by individual owners. One of the consultants told us that "[the CEO's] goal with BATON is to reduce these ad hoc applications. Some of these applications may do the same thing, but are never shared because nothing is integrated." Also, the ability of business managers to obtain access to project data depended mostly on their relationship with individual owners. That is, personal connections with system administrators and developers determined who got what data, rather than access to data being determined by a general data access policy. Since the organizational culture from the past few decades was family-oriented, administration of the IT department from top management was relaxed. As a result, IT specialists had great power over how they operated their supporting functionalities. Furthermore, IT specialists, guarded by techno-babble (technical jargon), were able to easily shield themselves from any attempts to question their practices or motives in order to defend their turf. According to one consultant, "since most managers do not know IT in any detail, it is not difficult to SCARE people away from potentially poor practices!" The consultants' perception was that technology intimidation was used as a defense mechanism because business managers are not normally IT literate and are thereby easily intimidated. One of the consultants reflected that "when the company was small, this [lack of macro management] was probably not a problem, but the tremendous growth of URF in the past five years has made it almost impossible to operate IT support in this way." In spite of the discovered poor IT practices, however, the consultants were still confident that implementation was possible: "By implementing this new IT-project, we hope to change the existing IT infrastructure and make it into an integrated one. Also we anticipate that there will be a good chance for us to bring in a new paradigm of integrated and coordinated business practices."
Consultants' Frustration With some effort, in November, the consultants moved the BATON project into the IT department and got it started. They talked with each IT specialist in the department in an
effort to understand their corresponding responsibilities and the overall structure of the existing system architecture. At first the project seemed to be going well, but as events unfolded the consultants began to feel frustrated. It seemed to the consultants that the in-house IT people simply did not care about the project. It also seemed that the IT people were not willing to carry out their given responsibilities to make the project a success. In fact, the assistance that the consultants expected from the IT department turned out to be resistance: IT controlled all the databases and systems. As a r esult, we had to go through the DBA to get access to the database and subsequent access to the data inside the database. However, access was not easily forthcoming. It literally took a month for us just to get an account on the real system. Actually, we were never really sure that the account that we were given was really on the real system. We suspected that it was a dummy account with non-production data. Of course, this set us back months because we had to figure out what was going on.
It seemed that at almost every step the consultants took to move the project forward, the IT department induced obstructions of some kind. "We had the same problem with network security. To connect to a database server, we asked the network administrator to open a port for us. Again it took weeks for us to really get one." When the consultants needed to prototype the new system somewhere, they again became frustrated: "we needed a machine to host our system, but we were turned away because our project was not included in their routine operation." In spite of enormous efforts expended by the consultants, the project was not making progress with IT. Unable to push IT forward, the consultants turned to the CEO for support and hoped that he would help the effort. According to one of the consultants, however, the CEO was ambiguous in answering their request. "I think, although we were delegated by the CEO to lead the project, we didn't really have the power to push IT in any real direction. Hence we could not make change which was crucial to implement the project." One of the consultants also noted: "The CEO shared the vision but didn't actively help us." Although business managers had sponsored the project, they did not feel that it was their responsibility to push IT to change. Without a supporting structure to facilitate the change, the consultants felt alone and powerless to overcome resistance from IT. "We really wished that people from all levels had joined us and to create an environment that would pressure IT [for change]. To date, this hasn't happened." By early 2003, what really concerned the consultants was that they were losing sponsorship from business managers. It was obvious that the new system could not be built and tested for production without costing another year in implementation time. The consultants revealed to us that what they promised in terms of project timelines was not being met. Having perceived the problems in implementation in IT, business managers began pulling back, doubting that the technology would really work.
As obstacles to the IT implementation continued to mount, the consultants started to realize that the project was facing serious challenges and that they were trapped between the vision and the reality. Powerless and helpless, the consultants noticed that their enthusiasm was fading.
IT Reactions to Change Finally, in March of 2003, one of the consultants resigned and the database administrator (DBA) from the IT department was appointed to lead the BATON project. By the time we finished our first round of interviews at URF, one and half years had passed since the project began and the system still had not been moved into production. Business managers had gone back to using their original IS applications to manage their processes the way they had prior to BATON. What had really gone wrong? Wondering about this question, we interviewed (for the second time) the consultants. "Basically, IT had strongly resisted the implementation because they feared that they would lose power over controlling the data and systems." "This is the power that IT doesn't want to lose," according to one of the consultants. As further pondered by the consultants: IT traditionally controls everything that is technology related. With that power, IT is able to operate as they see fit. Since most of the IT specialists have worked at URF for many years (and were responsible for creating the culture over time), they are content with the loose culture that exists at both IT and URF. At the same time, non-IT people have become accustomed to the IT practices. That is, no one has ever challenged how IT should provide expertise to support the organization.
The consultants also pointed out that " being unfamiliar with BATON may cause IT to resist the implementation of this technology." One of the consultants confided that the level of resistance from IT was somewhat of a surprise. "I thought that IT people would love this technology since it is novel and eventually it should free them from tedious application development. But this turned out to be just a misconception on our part." …
From the consultants' story, it may seem that IT is resisting good change with no regard for progress or the business. However, there is another side to the story. The major BATON programmer (who has been on the project from the beginning) did not really resist implementation and actually has become a champion of the project. We now relate some of his perceptions: I don't really think people [within the IT department] really envisioned a purpose as much as [the consultants] did. I think they [other IT specialists] were there just because they had to be there. As far as purpose goes, I don't even know what it did at the beginning [how BATON worked when he first began the project].
Nobody really knew what the technology was for [at the beginning] . I think they [other IT specialists] were just busy with other projects. I guess they just figured it wasn't their problem either. I think it's hard for them [other IT specialists] to take [consultants] seriously, because [one of the consultants] often said the tool [will] basically replace all [other] IT tools. And their experience was that they had never seen anything [that] would do this in the first place. So it's hard to take [the consultant] seriously. I think they [other IT specialists] just figure more like it's impossible.
Also, the programmer revealed that the CEO was just so busy that he could not become actively involved in the implementation. Although the DBA was assigned to lead the project, she was also busy with her routine work, and did not really care about the project anyway. The programmer concluded, " basically there is no lead on this project now." …
Admittedly, the consultants, reflecting upon their experience with the IT department, commented that they had not been consistent in educating across all groups concerning the new technology and the potential benefits to the organization in the long term. Neither had they made as much effort as they should have to rally sponsorship from IT people and prepare them for the intervention. "I guess we did not spend as much time and energy with the IT department as we did preparing business managers for the new technology. We could have spent more time with IT prior to pushing for implementation." The consultant went on to say that " without laying the groundwork for a change at the IT level, we underestimated the difficulties in implementing the project, [and] were unable to make the intended change to a new paradigm within IT." The reason given by the consultants was that the tool is really for business managers, not IT. However, "IT is central to the plan. We should have anticipated this. We didn't mean to underestimate IT. We just thought that they would do as directed by the CEO." …
CURRENT CHALLENGES/PROBLEMS FACING THE ORGANIZATION The major challenge facing successful implementation of BATON is the mismatch between the legacy IT culture within URF and the paradigm shift inherent in the novel technology. Adding to this challenge is the imperative of effectively managing the change process, particularly resistance to change. Unfortunately, URF management never recognized the urgency to systematically re-examine the change intervention. The next subsection provides additional analysis of the case to help readers understand the critical problems facing the organization so as to develop a more informed plan of rectification.
Mismatch Historically, the culture at URF was rooted in that of a small, family-owned business. With fewer contracts and grant projects, the level of managing IT support in business process management was relatively low. Such low levels of control on the IT department
and a lack of an overall IT strategy from top management made the IT department a selfindulgent (and relatively independent) entity that possessed undue power in controlling processes. This translated into an inability to share data across independent systems, and created practices based upon personal connections rather than standard IT procedures and policies. As the organization expanded in size and number of contracts over the past decade, the existing IT culture did not fit. Instead, the expansion of the organization as well as the changing business environment demanded increased strategic planning of overall process management, efficient utilization of IT resources, and standardized IT operations. That is, top management believed that a high level of strategic control on IT would be necessary to match the continued expansion of URF. To illustrate, the new technology (BATON) allows business managers to implement their own processes without direct interference from IT. Implementation of BATON induces a radical departure from the existing culture within IT. That is, IT was used to dictate how information is to be supplied to processes rather than managers dictating how and when they need information to support their businesses. With BATON, IT actually has to do less work because they only have to translate the management-established process into the system infrastructure. However, this also implies that IT will no longer be able to control the processes to the extent that they had in the past. Furthermore, a process management system built with BATON technology is, by default, centralized and shared so that it can be used across all levels of the organization to meet disparate needs. The artifactual boundaries set by individual IT owners are thereby broken. "Do me a favor" requests are replaced by standard IT procedures and policies if BATON is successful. This new paradigm contrasts significantly with the existing non-standardized culture and practices within IT and thereby demands drastic changes in policies, procedures, and attitudes. The mismatch (between nonstandard IT practices and BATON requirements), however, had not been fully recognized by top management during planning of the change intervention. Moreover, top management (and the consultants) underestimated the challenges (change management issues) of implementing the new technology in a provincial IT culture. Hence, top management faces a dilemma. They must reconcile the mismatch to save the project from failure by creating a better estimate of crucial change management issues as they relate to the IT culture. Therefore, the reader should begin thinking about ways that URF can reconcile this mismatch. In addition, the reconciliation should take into account the following change management issues that are still hindering progress.
Communicating/sharing the vision of change: As the case revealed, there was insufficient energy from top management to communicate and promote the vision to lower levels of the organization (i.e., programmers and other IT specialists). Further, the CEO's vision was well established, but it did not include specific objectives and plans to guide realization of the vision. Only informed by an abstract vision, organization members had limited understanding of how the change initiative would really affect them. This was clearly demonstrated by the fact that IT specialists were unaware of the purpose of BATON when it was first
implemented in their department. As a result, they did not buy into the project (from the beginning), and as change unfolded, their resistance to the change escalated. The absence of a concrete and consistent articulation of the change vision, that should be communicated and shared by organizational members, created an early obstacle to a successful change intervention. Managing the change process: In spite of the fact that the external consultants were hired to lead the implementation of BATON, they were seen by organization members as outsiders with no influence or power. Further, responsibilities for enacting change were not clearly assigned to those involved in the change (i.e., business managers, PIs, in-house IT specialists). Without such clear responsibilities, the normal management structure was not sufficient to support the change effort given that managers are already busy. As indicated from analysis of the case, consultants lost political sponsorship from other actors (i.e., managers and PIs) to a great extent in that they were unable to overcome the resistance they encountered when attempting to bring IT into the change effort. This insufficient management of the change process has contributed greatly to the problems encountered with BATON implementation within the IT department. Indeed, researchers have purported that "it is not the results management is managing, but the processes that achieve results" (Jick, 1993, p. 171). Resistance to change: It seems apparent that the CEO took a technological imperative perspective in attempting to realize his vision with respect to intellectual property protection and process management. That is, he and other top management implicitly assumed that implementing BATON would automatically enable expected changes in work routines, information flows, and performance. While such assumptions appear to be reasonable for business managers because the benefits are apparent, they fail when dealing with IT department resistance because it is more difficult for IT people to understand how such change benefits them. The IT department was used to controlling business processes, data, systems, and was seldom challenged by management to change such practices. As a result, it was difficult to convince them that BATON offered any real benefits because management neglected the existing IT culture developed over the years. As the change process unfolded, IT was pressed to rethink almost every aspect of their culture, and a sense of being questioned about their current practices emerged among IT specialists. As such, IT was immediately defensive about BATON and resisted because they wanted to maintain their comfortable way of life. In contrast, business managers were not as deeply affected (in a perceived negative sense) as their IT counterparts. Thus business managers were less resistant to changes brought about by BATON. The challenge facing top management concerns what can be done to be more proactive in diffusing IT [1] resistance.
[1]
Names of the organization, its parent organization, units, and members have all been disguised.
APPENDIX A
Illustration for Mapping Business Processes
APPENDIX B Example for Process Keys & Definitions
Bing Wang is a doctoral candidate in the Management Information Systems (MIS) Department at Utah State University (USA). She worked as a senior executive in a multinational company in Singapore prior to her PhD study, and has offered IT
consulting services to the Utah Department of Transportation. She now serves as the assistant program chair as well as a track chair for the 2004 Global Information Technology Management Conference. Her research interests include technology-based organization intervention and change management. She is currently working on a major research project at a university-owned research institute. David Paper is an associate professor at Utah State University in the Management Information Systems (MIS) Department. He has several refereed publications appearing in journals such as Information & Management, Journal of Information Technology Cases and Applications, Information Resource Management Journal, Communications of the AIS, Long Range Planning, Creativity and Innovation, Accounting Management and Information Technologies, Journal of Managerial Issues, Business Process Management Journal, Journal of Computer Information Systems, and Information Strategy: The Executive's Journal. He has worked for Texas Instruments, DLS, Inc., and the Phoenix Small Business Administration. He has performed IS consulting work for the Utah Department of Transportation (Salt Lake City, UT) and the Space Dynamics Laboratory (Logan, UT). His teaching and research interests include change management, process reengineering, database management, e-commerce, and enterprise integration.
This case was previously published in the Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 7(1), pp. 34 52, © 2005. –
Your Task: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Identify the problem/s. Give your analysis. State your findings. Base from your findings, give your conclusion. From your conclusion, give your recommendations
